The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution

(Draft Platform for the Proletarian Party)

THE FOREIGN POLICY OF THE NEW GOVERNMENT

3. In the field of foreign policy, which has now been brought to
the forefront by objective circumstances, the new government
is a government for the continuation of the imperialist war,
a war that is being waged in alliance with the imperialist
powers—Britain, France, and others—for division of the
capitalist spoils and for subjugating small and weak
nations.

Subordinated to the interests of Russian capitalism and its
powerful protector and master—Anglo-French imperialist
capitalism, the wealthiest in the world, the new government,
notwithstanding the wishes expressed in no uncertain fashion on
behalf of the obvious majority of the peoples of Russia through
the Soviet of Soldiers’ and Workers’ Deputies, has taken no real
steps to put an end to the slaughter of peoples for the
interests of the capitalists. It has not even published the
secret treaties of an obviously predatory character (for the
partition of Persia, the plunder of China, the plunder of
Turkey, the partition of Austria, the annexation of Eastern
Prussia, the annexation of the German colonies, etc.), which, as
everybody knows, bind Russia to Anglo-French predatory
imperialist capital. It has confirmed these treaties
concluded by tsarism, which for centuries robbed and oppressed
more nations than other tyrants and despots, and which not only
oppressed, but also disgraced and demoralised the Great-Russian
nation by making it an executioner of other nations.

The new government has confirmed these shameful depredatory
treaties and has not proposed an immediate armistice to all the
belligerent nations, in spite of the clearly expressed demand of
the majority of the peoples of Russia, voiced through the
Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. It has evaded the
issue with the help of solemn, sonorous, bombastic, but
absolutely empty declarations and phrases, which, in the mouths
of bourgeois diplomats, have always served, and still serve, to
deceive the trustful and naïve masses of the oppressed
people.

4. Not only, therefore, is the new government unworthy of the
slightest confidence in the field of foreign policy, but to
go on demanding that it should proclaim the will of the
peoples of Russia for peace, that it should renounce
annexations, and so on and so forth, is in practice merely to
deceive the people, to inspire them with false hopes and to
retard the clarification of their minds. It is indirectly to
reconcile them to the continuation of a war the true social
character of which is determined not by pious wishes, but by
the class character of the government that wages the war, by
the connection between the class represented by this
government and the imperialist finance capital of Russia,
Britain, France, etc., by the real and actual
policywhich that class is pursuing.